In sugar coated confectionery, such as marble chocolates, and sugar coated tablets, such as pharmaceuticals, a coating of a saccharide, such as sugar, is formed on the surface of a material to protect the material or render the material easy to eat or swallow. The sugar coating is usually effected as follows. An aqueous sugar solution is mixed with an assistant comprising a polysaccharide, such as gum arabic, chemically modified starch or dextrin, or a protein, such as gelatin, to prepare a sugar solution having high viscosity and concentration. This sugar solution is put on a material to be coated in a rotary kiln and subjected to forced draft drying. This procedure is repeated several times to form a coating.
On the other hand, tableted confectionery, such as lemonade-flavored confectionery, and tablets, such as pharmaceuticals, are produced by kneading various powdery raw materials as main ingredients with a solution of a binder, such as gum arabic, or granulating the main ingredients, effecting compression molding, such as tableting, and optionally drying the tablets. In the tableted confectionery and tablets prepared without use of any binder, partial breaking or cracking occurs due to physical force applied internally or externally during production or storage after the production. On the other hand, when a binder is used and granules of powder are prepared prior to tableting, use of the binder is indispensable because if good granules having a homogeneous size cannot be prepared, the subsequent workability would become poor. The gum arabic used as the binder is obtained by refining exudates of trees belonging to the genus Acacia.
In recent years, however, the production of the gum arabic has been sharply decreased due to abnormal weather and a change of government in the Sudan, a main gum arabic producing country. This has resulted in an increase in price of the gum arabic and produced sharp fluctuations in the production and price of the gum arabic. Binders, which are stable in price, include gelatin and dextrin. However, the binding force thereof is so low that, during the sugar coating operation, cracking occurs on the surface of the sugar coating or sugar coating comes off. Further, good granules as described above cannot be prepared using gum arabic and polysaccharides such as dextrin. For this reason, sugar coating compositions, which can provide a high coating strength, can be stably supplied and are inexpensive, and binders for granules and tableted products, which have a high binding force, enable good granules to be prepared before tableting, are naturally occurring, have a low price and can be produced stably, have been desired in the art.